Screenshot: Leaders from the past: Dr. Qasimlo talks about abjuring terrorism during the Kurdish struggle. Youtube.The situation of the Kurds in a drastically changing Middle East has received little attention in academia and less in the media despite their growing impact on regional and international politics. The biggest stateless people living in the Middle East are on the verge of a new status, not only in Iraqi Kurdistan, where a referendum for independence takes place on September 25, 2017, but also in Syria and Turkey. Then there are the Iranian Kurds. Their stories and the conditions they live in are the least known, not only by the international community but also by fellow-Kurds living in three neighbouring countries, due to an intense isolation. This week’s short series looks at current political struggles of the Kurds in four neighbouring countries or in a country that does not exist on the world map but in the hearts and mind of 40 million people. Mehmet Kurt, series editor.
Inspired by the Kurdish movement in the north and Rojava (in Turkey and Syria), PJAK (the Kurdistan Independent Life Party affiliated to the Kurdistan Workers's Party (PKK) or Iranian branch of the PKK) and recently KODAR (the East Kurdistan Democratic and Independent Party also founded by the PKK, to replace the PJAK) were established to fill the gap of the Kurdish struggle in Iran. Yet, this new attempt has faced several serious obstacles. Can Kurdish politics in Rojhelat, (Rojhelat, literally means East, and refers to the eastern part of Kurdistan which is located within Iran’s current borders) look for a change of course to take it out of its current stagnation? Or will it continue to waste the time, resources and patience of a disappointed Kurdish people?
The Islamic state of Iran executes at least seven people every day. Tens of thousands of political prisoners and thousands of other prisoners accused of multiple crimes spend their lives behind bars inside the regime’s prisons. A large proportion of these are Kurdish people accused and tortured on the basis that they are the enemy of God and his Islamic regime in Iran.
